Tamil POWs denounce Colombo's latest announcement, continue fast

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 September 2016, 23:35 GMT]Tamil Prisoners of War waging a continuous hunger strike at Anuradhapura prison told TamilNet on Friday that the latest announcement of Colombo's Ministry of Prison Reforms of sending 23 of the detained Tamil prisoners under the notorious ‘Prevention of Terrorism Act’ to the so-called ‘military rehabilitation’ before their release was a deceptive move. Most of those in the announced list were mentioned together with one case per person. But, most of the detainees were facing three to four cases in different courts and relieving them of one case with the outcome of ‘military rehabilitation’ will not deliver freedom to them from the other cases, they said. In addition, the announcement also contained names of those already released and subjected to military rehabilitation, which exposed the level of ignorance on the part of Colombo in addressing their PTA cases, the Tamil prisoners said.

“Our question is whether the International Community of State establishments are also playing the same cards as that of the Sri Lankan Government,” a spokesperson of the Tamil prisoners asked, questioning the human rights discourse in Geneva not only ignoring the plight of Tamil prisoners being detained under the notorious PTA, but also classifying them as ‘security detainees’.

“The same forces that describe us as ‘security detainees’ are behind the ‘consensus’ discourse with genocidal Sri Lanka in Geneva. They keep on welcoming the SL State as being engaged in a process of ‘reconciliation’ while we languish in genocidal prisons,” the spokesperson said.

“How can anyone call the Sri Lankan Government as being engaged in reconciliation while the entire system that annihilated Eezham Tamils by waging a genocidal onslaught gets off scot-free while the Tamil prisoners of war are being subjected to prolonged cases and labelled as security detainees,” the political prisoners in Anuradhapura prison asked.

A Tamil prisoner, Tharmalingam Sathiyalingam, released on 28 June has been included in the list as someone going to be released in future after ‘military rehabilitation’.

Last year, on 21 November, TNA Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran came with a list in which four of the prisoners in the latest list, were named as persons going to be released after ‘military rehabilitation’ at that time.

Rasalingam Parthipan, David Suranjith, Thadchanamoorthy Selvakumar and Kovinthasamy Suntharamany were the names in Sumanthiran's list last year. The same names also appear in D.M. Swaminathan's list now.

This indicates how long it is going to take to implement the latest announcement, the prisoners said describing the announcement as an attempt to contain their struggle.

In the meantime, the prisoners welcomed the uprising to take place on Jaffna on Saturday and urged the people to step up their struggle exposing the deceptions being jointly staged against humanity by the forces seeking world dominance and their ‘consensus agents’ engaged in structural genocide against the nation of Eezham Tamils.